The Poor | featured news

Pope Francis urged princes, presidents, sheiks and thousands of ordinary people gathered for his installation Mass on Tuesday to protect the environment, the weakest and the poorest, mapping out a clear focus of his priorities as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Mitt Romney stepped up his efforts to repair the damage from his “47 percent” comments, trying to reassure voters that he cares about the poor and middle class.

Now, at least, there can be no doubt about who is waging class warfare in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney would pit the winners against the “victims,” the smug-and-rich against the down-on-their-luck, the wealthy tax avoiders against those too poor to owe income tax. He sees nearly half of all Americans as chumps who sit around waiting for a handout.

Poor smokers in New York spend 25% of their income on cigarettes, a new study finds. The state has the nation's highest cigarette tax and a pack there can cost up to $12 (though many smokers buy cheaper packs online). Wealthier smokers feel the sting less: those earning $60,000 a year or more spend just 2% of their money on cigarettes. Smokers' rights groups say the taxes punish poor smokers but health officials say they help many people quit.

David Frum says the drought is driving up world food prices, and history suggests that is likely to produce unrest within poor nations. Prediction: 2013 will be a year of serious global crisis. That crisis is predictable, and in fact has already begun. It will inescapably confront the next president of the United States. Yet this emerging crisis got not a mention at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. We'll see if the Democrats do better.

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough... Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law.

The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net....

Health insurer WellPoint Inc will buy rival Amerigroup Corp for $4.46 billion in a major bet on the expansion of the U.S. government's Medicaid health plans for the poor.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said on Monday his state will not implement an expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor or create a health insurance exchange, leaving the state with the highest percentage of people without health insurance outside President Barack Obama's signature law.

Democrats and voting rights groups fear that ID laws could suppress votes among people who may not typically have a driver's license, and disproportionately affect the elderly, poor and minorities. While the number of votes is a small percentage of the overall total, they have the potential to sway a close election. Remember that the 2000 presidential race was decided by a 537-vote margin in Florida. A Republican leader in Pennsylvania said recently that the state's new ID law would allow Romney to win the state over President Barack Obama.